Exclusive: Mark spills the beans on Scorsese's thriller
29 March 2005
Did you enjoy the Easter holidays? Spend your time eating chocolate eggs and watching Doctor Who, eh? Well, spare a thought for us poor bods at Empire, who spent our break red-eyed on transatlantic flights. We were visiting the set of Four Brothers, the "character-driven action movie" starring Mark Wahlberg as one of the titular siblings. Once there, we managed to corner Wahlberg and ask him about his role in Martin Scorsese's The Departed, the American reworking of Hong Kong hit Infernal Affairs. Here's what he had to say, but beware spoilers!

"I'm a cop. I'm actually Leo's commanding officer and Matt Damon's commanding officer. I can't tell you what happens but I start killing people, left, right and centre. I play a crazy f*****g psycho. They're rewriting the script and my part right now, so…"

Those familiar with the original film will immediately note that things have changed somewhat – Inspector Wong, who was in the same position in the Hong Kong film, completely failed to go crazy and kill everyone. In fact, he verged on the cuddly as he shepherded Tony Leung's undercover cop-among-the-gangsters and unwittingly mentioned Andy Lau's undercover-gangster-in-the-cops. And if this good guy cop is a psycho this time around – well, anything goes.

Wahlberg also told us a little about Four Brothers itself, where he plays one of four foster brothers alongside André 3000, Tyrese and Garrett Hedlund (Troy's Patroclus), who reunite after their mother is murdered. "The key to making it work is that you care about these guys and that you want to root for them to achieve their goal – even if that goal is to avenge their mother's death by killing a bunch of people."